


Memories and Promises

by lottiezeb



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: F/M, i am not crying
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-11
Updated: 2016-08-11
Packaged: 2018-08-08 01:01:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7736962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lottiezeb/pseuds/lottiezeb





	Memories and Promises

I  
“If you’ll just step this way with me, ma’am.”  
The nurse’s face was politely impassive and he spoke in a detached monotone as he led Shepard down the hallways of Huerta Memorial Hospital. “Mr. Nuara’s lung capacity is dropping and the lesions are spreading as predicted. Our list of usable antibiotics is narrowing, and the metastatic effects to the heart are no longer negligible. He has his good days and his bad days, and I’m afraid you’ve caught him in a state of greater weakness than usual.” He paused at a doorway, and his eyes slid into momentary contact with hers. “It’s common for patients in the advanced stages of Kepral’s Syndrome to occasionally lose control of their eidetic memory and…wander. Just so you’re prepared, Ms.-?”  
She stared at him blankly for a moment, then shook her head in an attempt to clear the bewildering haze that had descended over everything. “Shepard.” The word came out choked and husky.  
He tapped the holographic switch to open the door. “Right through here, Ms. Shepard. I’ll give you two some privacy.”  
With the nauseatingly hygienic smell of the room coating her throat at each breath, she sank numbly into the chair at the bedside. Thane lay still, apparently asleep. Who, she wondered, had helped the galaxy’s deadliest assassin into his thin hospital gown? The thought made something hitch in her stomach- whether a perverse huff of laughter or a lump of grief or both or neither, she did not know. She rested her head in her hands and rubbed wearily at her temples, which felt stiff and etched with care.   
Her heart jolted and her head snapped up when he suddenly spoke. “Silent tread, muscles taut, slipping from shadow to shadow. I stand on my toes to reach- hands hesitate, tremble against the living warmth of his neck, his chin. Then the slightest crack and he has crumpled, the fall of a first kill.”  
“Thane?” His eyes were wide open now, unseeing as the words tumbled from his mouth. She gingerly placed one of her hands over his, gave it an uncertain squeeze. “Thane?”  
“The door is open when it should not be. Darkness leaks out, shattered glass underfoot. Kolyat’s whimpers fill the house. I try to take him into my arms but he resists, will not stop clinging to his mother’s body.”  
She wanted to yell. Shake him, hard. Force him back to awareness, jerk him away from the abyss of remembrance that trapped him. Instead she sat frozen, listening helplessly to the torrent of words that poured into the room.  
“Warrior angel in repose. Cheek cool to the touch, palm pressed against my heartbeat. Eyelids twitch, and a slight frown of determination. What does she see in her sleep?”  
So it went, on and on. Shepard did not know how long she sat there with him, did not know if sitting with him was the right thing to do, if she violated the sanctity of these memories with her presence. All she knew was the sound of his voice and the ache in her chest that pushed more heavily with each word.   
Eventually, silence came. She felt the hand that had lain limply twitch and then close around hers. She tried again. “Thane?”  
A little smile then, and a blink of clear eyes. “Siha.” 

II  
I love you. If all else whispers back into the tide, know this for fact.  
The words came to her in dreams now. She knew because she would wake with the slightest taste of them fading from her tongue, the airiest echoes of them in her ears. She would lie as still as she could then, savoring the dissipating tendrils of peace until they were completely gone and she was left alone in the dark with the silent demands of the billions she fought for.  
She carried her final promise to him everywhere. It was with her as she stood bare-faced in the Rannoch sunlight, as she saw the haggard, hopeless expressions of the refugees on the Citadel, as everything around her became choking smoke and bullets and death. As her arms curled around Liara in a final embrace, as she crawled bloodied and broken towards the furious iridescence of the Conduit. As the pain ebbed away, her final choice made.   
Goodbye, Thane. I’ll meet you across the sea.


End file.
